How AI Could Change The Art Of War

At a recent US Army War College conference, defense experts discussed how the use of increasingly complex artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for national defense purposes complicates the nature of command.

Because AI can think in ways that humans cannot, which is the whole point of developing it, soldiers, military commanders and the Commander in Chief may eventually have to blindly trust military intelligence and strategy recommendations generated by AI. After all, there will be many cases where a human presented with a certain strategy will not be able to fully understand how the AI developed that approach. The only reasonable choice would be to trust the AI’s calculations, which some experts believe will put AI effectively in charge of military strategy. As a result, wars will basically be fought by AI, even if armies don’t develop autonomous weapons.

While it may not be easy to come up with a definite solution to this conundrum, governments should pay close attention to the implications of increasing reliance on AI for national defense to prevent doom scenarios of countries engaging in wars for reasons no one understands.

This topic of AI in national security and war is one we have reported on extensively at OODAloop, including reporting on what business leaders should know about these critical topics. For recent reporting see:

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